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Weddings, funerals, movement banned in North Korea

According to Jieyi, sanctions and military exercises won’t reduce tensions with North Korea.

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The ruling Worker’s Party of Korea is organizing the party congress, and the country’s leader Kim Jong-un has ordered extraordinary security measures.

The last party congress was held in 1980, during which Kim Jong-un’s father – Kim Jong-il – was confirmed as the successor to the state’s founder, Kim Il-sung.

Seoul along with Washington and Tokyo implemented their own unilateral sanctions to punish Pyongyang for its provocative acts.

North Korean authorities said Kim Dong Chul, 62, was stealing valuable information including military secrets and giving them to South Korea.

Weddings and funerals have been banned and Pyongyang is in lockdown as preparations for a once-in-a-generation party congress get underway in North Korea.

South Korea’s unification ministry also said that Seoul is closely monitoring the situation though particular signs have not been detected.

Thousands of delegates are set to travel to Pyongyang for the congress, at which advances in the drive for nuclear weapons will likely be hailed.

Internationally, Kim has already gotten a lot of coverage lately as the North’s propaganda machine churned out a heightened barrage of bluster and threats as the US and South Korea massed for annual joint military exercises just south of the Demilitarized Zone.

But there was an embarrassing stumble in the home straight, with the failure in recent weeks of three separate efforts to test fire a powerful, new mid-range ballistic missile capable of striking United States bases on the Pacific island of Guam.

It said US troops pointed their fingers at North Korean soldiers and made unusual noises and unspecified “disgusting” facial expressions.

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Satellite imagery shows continued low-level activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, making it hard to determine whether the North’s nuke test is imminent, according to 38 North, a US website monitoring the communist country.

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